Tag: trauma

Usually when I disappear from my ‘duties’ (like this is a duty, ha!), it’s because I am stagnating and not really committing to myself properly. For once, I’ve actually been upping my game fractionally every day on the self worth commitment front. Is my life better? No, i’m still grumpy and miserable and stressed and I moan and bitch all the time. Perhaps I could even say things feel a little bit worse, but that isn’t true. All that has happened through this process so far is that I have become more aware of what I am creating mindlessly. I am yet to return to a level of control over what I am making manifest in my life, but awareness and acceptance is a first step, as they say.

I am aware that I look for or expect the worst, I panic, I blame, I give up or don’t even start, I don’t believe myself or others (less of this latter one) capable of something big or small… I am basically a fucking doomer. I don’t feel unwell, I don’t feel really low… I just feel disconnected from my happy, wholesome source. And my absent progress is that every day I am doing something to step closer towards my core. There will come a time, as there has in the past, when I will be able to do this at the flip of a switch. I don’t feel there yet, and another thing that’s changed is I am more ok with that… I am more accepting of where I am at. Life can be better but I am taking steps to make it so.

I stuck to it every single day. I had my daughter jumping on my ribs, pooping frequently, crying or doing her best to sabotage it. I saw it as an opportunity to continue to do my best to commit to myself even when everything feels against me and I learned a lot of things along the way. I highly recommend that woman’s work – she is beautifully in touch with what needs to happen for us to better connect with our purpose, and what she teaches us about our bodies applies all over our lives. I am still doing her yoga videos every day and I continue to do so for the rest of 2019 and beyond. Or yoga daily at least, maybe I won’t need videos eventually. So far I have only missed one day, because I forgot about it.

For February I have added in a daily gratitude practice. Every day I have been writing in some depth about something I am grateful for and the impact of that thing, or lack of, in my life and the life of others. I also will be starting up my gratitude jar any day now – I am sucking at this because its hard to put it somewhere the baby can’t reach but that will remind me. I will do better.

My intention is that for every month of 2019, I will implement a new thing to my life to go on top of the previous things. Some are actually old but forgotten. Some things I think I would like to do in coming months are to go for a walk every day, cook healthier meals, practice meditation (in multiple forms), be creative, do something kind, help the planet, meaningful connection etc. I hope to build up a healthier way of being and living and doing everything in my life month on month, adding a new ‘thing’ on top of the previous ones every month. A foundation of self worth, compassion, productivity and well being, built up gradually so it doesn’t feel impossibly difficult.

I have also started writing my fiction novel. I haven’t gotten very far, and I only manage a couple of a5 pages each time, because somehow my daughter can tell (even in sleep) that I am writing and then she wakes up. She has done so once already as I write this. But it is a start, and I feel good for having done it… for having done something… for having woken up my imagination!

The final thing I have been up to is going to Oxford University for a seminar with the Faculty of Law. It was on ‘consent to vaginal examinations in labour and birth’. It was majorly intense and a little bit traumatic, but I was glad to be invited and included, for my voice to matter; to have an opportunity to put right what failed me and what fails other women so frequently. It was full of remarkable people – other women like me, professionals, academics, activists and world changers. I will speak more on it when I can, when their papers are published and when there is more momentum, & when I am ready to share my story more. It doesn’t feel like an important time to tell it here. Not yet, anyway. I had some closure from a very long complaint too, which ended far more favourably than I could have hoped.

If you take one thing away from this rambling pile of twaddle, let if be that we are worthy of however long it takes to do whatever it takes to get to what feels good inside ourselves again. We start with acceptance of where we are at. We work through the discomfort of acknowledging all of the ways in which we are self destructive. Then slowly, bit by bit by bit, we rebuild into a healthier, happier and more whole version of who we always were. Underneath the accumulated baggage, suffering & burden of who we thought we were, there is the brightest, most soulful, powerful, courageous and fulfilled badass motherfucker that we have always been at heart.

But until then… I am sucking it up and trying my best to get on with remembering.